Web Serials: It remains to be seen how important Evanescence will be

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Web Serials: It remains to be seen how important Evanescence will be

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DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Megazver posted:

Like I said, publishers republish breakout self-pub titles all the time now. Anthony Ryan's Blood Song, Jonathan French's Grey Bastards, Josiah Bancroft's Senlin Ascends, Michael McClung's The Thief Who Pulled On Trouble's Braids are just some books that I am personally aware that were all self-published on Amazon, did well, then got pretty good offers. poo poo just needs to be popular enough that they think it'd make money for them and wildbow is, like, the biggest serial guy.

I honestly didn't expect to have heard of anything in your list but those books are pretty solid. Good to hear there's money in that for the author.

# ¿ Oct 23, 2017 21:23

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# ¿ May 8, 2024 21:04

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

LLSix posted:

Okay, I'm out. Story I was reading kept forgetting what class the main character was. Kept switching between "warlock" and "necro." I just... who pays money for books where the author can't even remember what stuff is called for a whole chapter?

Can't even understand a necrowarlock, for shame.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2020 13:03

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Larry Parrish posted:

His understanding of racial tension in America is somewhere between Ed Edd and Eddy style gang hijinks and the bad guys from Robocop.

something something, an episode with Double-D getting shot in the dick.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2020 11:56

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Omi no Kami posted:

...also good god, I know this isn't Katalepsis but a lovecraftian horror story about politicians being literal ghouls and eldritch creatures might actually be fun, albeit not nearly as wholesome as KT.

That story by the Slate Star Codex dude about kabbalistic magic being real starting in 1970 had Reagan as a golem (he still gets shot and oops, turns out he's made of clay) and Obama as a literal magical negromancer

Feel free to check out at any point in that sentence, god knows I read the entire thing and uh... you shouldn't.

# ¿ Nov 22, 2020 14:11

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

navyjack posted:

Was �the long stairs� a real internet thing like Shia Laborite?

It's a Mario 64 room :colbert:

# ¿ Nov 28, 2020 13:22

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Flesnolk posted:

Worm is The Turner Diaries for Garth Ennis fans and I will not hear a word in its defence

This is actually spot on and I appreciate it.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2021 21:25

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Horizon Burning posted:

only to slam into the brick wall of reality that is the kind of person who would write thousands and thousands of words while uploading them to a blog that maybe a hundred people read

...anarchists?

on the other hand, I could just as easily say "...ecofascists?" so I mean, but you know what I mean.

DACK FAYDEN fucked around with this message at 02:33 on Feb 17, 2021

# ¿ Feb 16, 2021 00:54

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

VictualSquid posted:

I can't think of a story on royalroad that I consider legitimately good and that wasn't originally published somewhere else first.

eh I think Mother of Learning is good even if it doesn't stick the ending - it's rare for something to get me to bother hanging around to find out whether the ending is good

also Beware of Chicken is great and lighthearted so far so if it doesn't take a nosedive I will stick up to defend it in seventeen years when it's done

# ¿ Feb 17, 2021 15:58

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Peachfart posted:

Just looked it up, TWI is a bit over 7 million words as of now. Which makes it the longest English single author fiction written.

man I keep thinking of Henry Darger in different threads

but I wonder if he would have published on RR

# ¿ Feb 24, 2021 17:05

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Selkie Myth posted:

There's Azarinth Healer. Authors that have a great story, and are successfully running strong with it.

...uh, these are meant to be two distinct things, right

or does AH introduce literally any story after the first, gently caress, what'd I read, hundred chapters

# ¿ Mar 15, 2021 20:17

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

as another thread once titled, "There is always more and it is always worse"

# ¿ Mar 26, 2021 11:38

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Affi posted:

Read the warning post about how he�s attracting racists and being a waffle if you�d like but I can�t recall the author actually being racist in his writings.

he's nazi adjacent (in the sense that he refuses to cast out his following and continually waffles between the two sides of actual loving decency and racist biotruths)

Is Unsong the kabbalah one, because if so he has Obama being a literal negromancer (okay that's not fair, he's a demon, and Reagan is a literal golem, it's not just Obama but it's still in atrocious taste) as like a ha-ha backnote to the setting and that's just off the top of my head from the last time I complained about that nazi-adjacent fucker

# ¿ Mar 29, 2021 12:35

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Given the sound effects, I assume he's from like 1920 or something.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2021 12:32

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

90s Cringe Rock posted:

They grow on you.

You just have to read the second million words, and maybe the third, then you won't be able to put it down until the end. Well, maybe a fourth million words to get over your dislike of some of the side characters becoming more significant. Whoo though, it's not until about six million words that that one king doesn't suck but at least the tolerable characters in their bits have split off now.

It's like the three episode test for anime, or the first 30 hours before final fantasy thirteen really opens up and you finish the tutorial.

hey now that was only fifteen hours if you didn't suck at FFXIII

# ¿ Apr 15, 2021 17:59

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Larry Parrish posted:

i basically considered it to be juniper basically getting what he thinks he deserves for how he was as a teenager. but that might just be projection cuz i was a scumbag as a teenager and have a lot of self-loathing about it.

yeah I figured the reason the whole thing was poo poo was because the DM hated the MC because the MC had inadvertently "created" the DM's attitude via his self-loathing along with the entire world but that was never made explicit or anything so maybe I'm just insane

# ¿ Apr 26, 2021 12:21

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

90s Cringe Rock posted:

The funniest thing about litrpgs is when the author posts "oh poo poo I made a mistake in my spreadsheets"

I love this. Especially if I'm reading through well after the fact so they already fixed the scary broken math, which I totally was going to notice yessiree :allears:

# ¿ Apr 30, 2021 14:13

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Plorkyeran posted:

Yeah as the story goes on it basically converges to Zorian, Zach, and everyone else. This could be neat if it was a deliberate thing done to emphasize how isolated Zorian is from everyone else to the point where he can't even tell them apart, but it isn't.

man that's a lot of wasted potential I hadn't even considered

especially like, dude learns mind magic, maybe he would find himself leaning on it as a social crutch to be able to tell people apart?

# ¿ May 3, 2021 01:22

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Larry Parrish posted:

but hey maybe it's a meta commentary on how global warming won't matter for fairly comfortable westerners such as juniper, lol

not on purpose it isn't but the dude's part of the fuckin rationalist community so it absolutely is

# ¿ Jul 27, 2021 01:43

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Argue posted:

"Heavens'", not "Heaven's". ie: it's the sky

FFXIV players may enjoy this post because (for others) there's an entire expansion pack named Heavensward, wherein you head towards the heavens and also meet an organization of knights named Heaven's Ward... and the translator wanted to have a small field called the Heaven Sward just as a dumb pun but did not.

# ¿ Jul 29, 2021 20:49

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

KamikazePotato posted:

I'll have plenty of stats to give this thread after the 16th. Book is releasing on amazon then and I'm buying a lot of RR ads.

Good luck!

# ¿ Sep 14, 2021 12:39

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Silynt posted:

Enjoy one more Royalroad click through and KU download, the ad popped up immediately when I loaded the site and I couldn�t say no to that.

This is cheating, now you have to throw out your entire data set!

# ¿ Sep 20, 2021 05:44

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

"Killing Guy (My Graves Online)" is short and to the point, or else it's about finding, murdering, and burying someone named Guy.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2021 18:51

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

PoorWeather posted:

I gave my story the "School Life" label on RR even though the characters spend exactly 1 chapter actually in the school, and I hope I've managed to trick at least one person into reading it on this basis.

I hope not, not because that's not hilarious but because I do not wish to imagine such a person existing.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2022 15:20

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Peachfart posted:

I would totally be down for a school from the admin side.

Library of Heaven's Path should have taken that route

dude finds flaws in everything but he still has to deal with bureaucracy

# ¿ Jan 12, 2022 14:16

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Lone Goat posted:

Also written by the same author who did that porno dungeon serial

do you mean Blue Core or uh, is there another

unironically I want to know what to avoid

# ¿ Jan 28, 2022 03:18

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

what is there that's like Delve but with slightly fewer spreadsheets

I enjoy when people try to optimize within systems but reading actual loving spreadsheets is definitely a bridge too far for me

# ¿ Feb 2, 2022 14:43

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Whaleporn posted:

It feels like a different author took over Delve at some point because the soul stuff is a 180 flip from how fast paced and problem/conflict oriented the story was before he started self diving.

I absolutely agree with this, it is night and day from the earlier stuff and it's why I gave up on it.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2022 20:59

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

awesmoe posted:

I read litrpgs to get away from a sad whiny dude messing with spreadsheets ho ho ho

the fantasy is that they are happy doing so, fellow poster

# ¿ Feb 2, 2022 22:52

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Larry Parrish posted:

I read a couple thousand pages. The whole idea that consciousness can't exist at all in our universe, and arises because of extra dimensional entities 'living' in the energy pattern created by the structure of a brain. this is conclusively proven by the android who is totally mechanical and just emulates a human shape but still has a consciousness because it looks the same to the entities.

And people said Worm was kind of cosmic horror-y. They don't know poo poo lol. The Fifth Defiance is legitimately so depressing I couldn't finish it. The whole reason the apocalypse happened is nuts, too- I don't remember how far that side story is, but Jesus.

the ending is loving terrible

it literally sets up three possible world-ending scenarios, and then the last chapter is all just dialogue from the "bad" character responsible being like "okay pick one of these six things that is not lovely to happen, other five will not happen and here's how it will suck", the end

maybe I just don't appreciate art

# ¿ Feb 18, 2022 21:47

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

I definitely don't regret reading it, which is a reasonably high bar for me, so I'm not complaining, just wish it'd stuck the landing.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2022 22:29

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Bhodi posted:

"yeah it's slow but not like delve slow"

this would be like a 7/10 thread title if every random person knew what Delve was

# ¿ Feb 22, 2022 18:07

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Rob Filter posted:

I just went to Demesne royal road page on this thread's recommendation and had a flashback to when I last read the opening of this book and put it down in disgust.

This is your periodic reminder to anyone not reading Demesne that their is a reason for this.

the post recommending it did point out her name

I am with you though so I'm not gonna harp on it too hard because what the gently caress who names their character loli l. yuri

# ¿ Feb 22, 2022 21:45

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

catgirlgenius posted:

if i ever had my work misunderstood so badly the resulting impostor syndrome would snap my ego in half. i would assume that my fans hate me or that i'm so catastrophically bad at my craft that i should be a cautionary tale.

on the one hand it is good that you would try to take responsibility, but on the other, for once, no it is genuinely the children who are wrong, the readers of things on the internet are... well, you know

# ¿ Mar 11, 2022 14:17

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Infinity Gaia posted:

Fear not the man who has written 1000 different web novels, fear the one who has written the same web novel 1000 times.

true for Er Gen (and really most of the other big name chinese writers, right)

# ¿ Apr 9, 2022 19:08

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Rob Filter posted:

Secondly, this guide by TheFirstDefilier (aka writer of defiance of the fall), talks about how the web novel business model works. It's a grim and fascinating look into how the big stories on RR are shaped by the commercial pressures of the web novel medium: https://www.royalroad.com/forums/thread/116847

quote:

You can import new popular tropes from Asian webnovels, but it�s a bit risky if that trope hasn�t been popularized in the west yet.

For some reason it was this, of all the soulless sentences, that absolutely murdered me.

got some new tropes fresh off the boat

# ¿ Apr 10, 2022 14:04

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Yes, for... some reason.

(honestly I'd click on 'em just to read the blurbs)

# ¿ Apr 10, 2022 20:22

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Hungry posted:

I probably should not have held off on posting to RR as long as I did, that was a poor decision, because I've picked up plenty of audience there, but it's not the standard RR audience who dominate the site. There is another audience there, they just tend not to be very vocal in public comments and the like.

Kinda surprised that, as a goon, you didn't assume there were people who read all kinds of stuff and never posted in public comments :v:

(kidding, you do great work, just gotta josh ya for that assumption)

# ¿ Apr 11, 2022 00:04

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Larry Parrish posted:

I don't mind fantasy aristocracy politics when it's done right, but it rarely is. It's often just aesthetic. Like, they're just regular rich people and not you know, feudal or republican aristocrats.

I mean this is hand in hand with how all the politics are always the same, and it's modern Americana, the same, forever, except with setting trappings

(with the exception of Chinese webnovels in which case it's modern China, the same, forever, except with setting trappings)

# ¿ Apr 13, 2022 01:42

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Whaleporn posted:

woah woah woah, sometimes it's imperial era china buddy!

this is also valid, although sometimes it's imperial era china with suspiciously modern trappings (western authors do the same with allegedly-medieval)

but everyone knows this and nobody wants to hear about the garbage can of ideology so uh, I'll shut up now

# ¿ Apr 13, 2022 12:05

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# ¿ May 8, 2024 21:04

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Bremen posted:

Doesn't the author have Bellatrix? get transported to the D&D world and completely dominate a bunch of high level wizards, despite Milo having established that even a low level spell could block the Imperius curse? That was about where I decided to drop it.

yes but partially because HP wizards can cast as fast as they can speak (technically faster with wandless magic) so they bypass the usual six-seconds-per-round cast time limitation that D&D has

which would be like someone flying at you in a boxing match IRL, you're not expecting it and you're gonna get got

(I am a huge nerd etc)

# ¿ Apr 14, 2022 18:55

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Web Serials: It remains to be seen how important Evanescence will be

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